Diaz-Ortiz - Design your day: be more productive, set better goals, and live life on purpose

I love the message of this book: get more done by doing less. Often, we think that productivity is the result of doing more, but rarely does it turn out that way. If you struggle, like I do, to focus on what matters most, then Design Your Day will be a breath of fresh air. Read it, then live it.

JEFF GOINS, bestselling author of The Art of Work

Who doesnt need more hours in their day? With so many responsibilities to juggle and hats to wear, it can feel like the days fly by and your to-do list flies out the window. By the end of the day you wonder to yourself, what did I even do? and why didnt the things I needed to accomplish actually get done? If you can identify with this, you dont want to miss this book. I cant think of anyone better to teach you to make the most of your life than Claire.

ALLISON VESTERFELT, author of Packing Light: Thoughts on Living Life with Less Baggage

Im making more than a few changes based on the super-practical concepts in this book. Claire does an amazing job of clearing the air and helping you make the most important things the most important things. Ive always been a goal-oriented person but this book is helping me take it to another level!

JOL MALM, founder of Summit Leaders Coaching and author of Vision Map

There are plenty of do-more-in-less-time strategies out there. Claire isnt about doing that with shortcuts. Rather, shes all about identifying the right goals, and acting with purpose so that you really can do more in less time, while still achieving the things you value. With clarity and insight, her methods are an antidote to idle busyness.

JUSTIN WISE, founder and CEO of Think Digital

Goals are everything when it comes to business and life in general. Claire couldnt have done a better job defining how to set purposeful goals for yourself. There are a lot of books out there about goal setting. This one is special. Meaningful goals matter, and Design Your Day helps you understand how to give your goals purpose, and more importantly, how to achieve them using a simple and effective strategy. Bravo Claire!

SCOTT WARNER, CEO, Gigg

Productivity isnt just about the grind; its about the decisions you make about how you work. Work hard to work well. Design Your Day will show you how.

ALLI WORTHINGTON, COO, Propel Women and author of Breaking Busy

2016 by
CLAIRE DIAZ-ORTIZ

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Edited by Pam Pugh
Interior design: Ragont Design and Erik M. Peterson
Cover design: Erik M. Peterson
Author photo: Jose Diaz-Ortiz

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Diaz-Ortiz, Claire, 1982- author.
Design your day : be more productive, set better goals, and live life on purpose / Claire Diaz-Ortiz.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-8024-1294-2
1. Time management. 2. Goal (Psychology) I. Title.
BF637.T5D53 2015
650.1--dc23

2015030185

All websites and phone numbers listed herein are accurate at the time of publication but may change in the future or cease to exist. The listing of website references and resources does not imply publisher endorsement of the sites entire contents. Groups and organizations are listed for informational purposes, and listing does not imply publisher endorsement of their activities.

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I t is 5:00 p.m. and youre late to pick up a small, uniformed child at soccer practice. Although the day is mostly over, you feel like it never really began. You vaguely remember an alarm going off in a darkened morning, and a rushed hour of kids and notebooks and cereal flying. A big yellow bus passed in and out of your vision. Then a series of errands and meetings and phone calls paraded by for hours on enda squashed sandwich in a plastic bag providing you a few minutes of quiet calm.

Throughout it all, there was the coffee. May I never have to live a day without coffee, you muse. A to-do list, sitting next to you on the passenger seat in your car, has twenty-seven items on it, only two of which you managed to cross off today. You didnt even really get started.

But today was an unusual day, you rationalize. So many unexpected things came up.

Tomorrow will be better, you promise yourself, only slightly wincing.

Its not a lie if you believe it, right?

When it comes to living the life we want to live, there are good days and there are bad days. We all have bad days. Days where the car breaks down when youre in labor, the puppy eats your college thesis, and the basement floods the Christmas presents away. And sometimes we cant change these days. But there are many dayslike when life zips by in a series of flashes and suddenly youre on the way to pick up that child from practice and your to-do list didnt get any shorterthat we can do something about. And learning to change these days is one of the most important lessons we will ever learn. Your particular day might differreplace the kids and breakfast cereal with lattes and late-night graduate school study groupsbut the idea is the same. Whatever it is that matters most to you in lifeyour family, your health, your faith, your friendswill suffer if you dont learn to live your days well.

Many of us have seen the experiment with the rocks and the jar. If you are new to this idea, go get a few big rocks, a ton of small pebbles, and a large glass jar. Youll find that if you put the pebbles in the jar first and then try to put in the big rocks, youll have trouble fitting everything in. Do things the other way around, though, and youre golden. Put your big rocks in the jar fist, and then fill the jars air pockets up with pebbles. Ta-da! It fits.